Existing Point-Of-Sale (POS) terminals and Self-Service Terminals (SSTs) have architectures with a tightly coupled relationship between the host Personal Computer (PC) and any attached peripheral devices, such that adding an additional peripheral device becomes a laborious and time-consuming exercise. The tightly coupled relationship between the terminals and their underlying peripheral device drivers is for the most part done for security reasons to ensure the terminal does not become compromised by viruses and/or hackers. It is also done to ensure that the terminals continue to function with maximum availability and without downtime due to unexpected failures. This is especially important for a particular type of SST, an Automated Teller Machine (ATM). Furthermore, because of the tightly coupled relationship any changes to the underlying Operating System (OS), applications, and/or device drivers requires substantial retesting and redevelopment is often needed to ensure that access to the attached peripheral devices are not impacted. Similarly, when hardware modules are revised or swapped out for new modules, substantial retesting and redevelopment is needed to ensure proper access to the attached peripheral devices.
Conversely, appliance clients are hardware devices commonly referred to as Internet-of-Things (IoT) devices, such devices do not require any significant configuration or management and are often entirely managed remotely over a network connection with little to no effort on the part of the end users. However, adding additional peripheral devices or hardware is often prohibited or substantially restricted because the underlying OS of such devices is locked down, which makes for improved security but makes IoT devices extremely inflexible and available for just a specific function or use and not much else. Furthermore, many IoT devices lack or have a fairly restricted number of available hardware peripheral ports available, such that adding a peripheral device is prohibited and often only done through wireless connections only.
Both terminals (as referenced above) and IoT devices have improved security over conventional computing devices because access to the hardware and underlying OS is severely restricted. However, both the terminals and the IoT devices are extremely difficult to extend with added functionality for additional peripheral devices.